What's On Stage Theatregoers' Choice
Awards

Last Update: 09 Feb 2003

Congratulations to the company of Macbeth
for winning Best Shakespearian Production at the What's On Stage
Theatregoers' Choice Awards!

These are the only London theatre awards
in which the audience are the judges across all 20 awards categories.
Voting for the 2003 Awards opened on 1 December 2002 and continued
until 31 January 2003. During that time, more than 16,000 theatregoers
voted (twice the number of last year), with leaders in many categories
fluctuating dramatically from day to day, hour to hour.

All professional productions that opened
in London between 1 December 2001 and the end of November 2002
were considered.

Voting - limited to one vote per person
- was strictly monitored to allow as fair an outcome as possible
and to ensure that any attempted rigging was captured. The monitoring
took a number of forms and included: technical checks including
'cookies' and server IP addresses and session monitoring; and,
finally, after gathering several weeks' worth of data, statistical
normalisation techniques were applied to highlight and eradicate
any blatant attempts to fraudulently affect the integrity of
the vote. The techniques involved the analysis of the entire
dataset for abnormal patterns of voting.

Votes for Best Shakespearian Production:

Hamlet - RSC at the Barbican 21.93%
King Lear - at the Almeida at King's Cross 8.83%
Macbeth - at the Albery 23.42%
Much Ado About Nothing - RSC at the Theatre Royal Haymarket 18.02%
Twelfth Night - at Shakespeare's Globe 15.67%
Twelfth Night - at the Donmar Warehouse 12.12%

The full list of nominations for the 2003
Whatsonstage.com Theatregoers' Choice Awards were announced 29
November 2002 at a star-studded celebratory event held at The
Venue, Leicester Square, and attended by a mix of industry figures,
performers and theatregoers.

More than 1,100 real theatregoers took part
in determining the shortlisted contenders across 20 awards categories
including Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best New Musical,
Best New Play and the newly established Planet Hollywood Theatre
Event of the Year.

Macbeth was nominated in four categories:

Best Actress - Samantha Bond

Best Supporting Actor - Mark Bazeley

Best Director - Edward Hall

Best Shakespearian Production

Voting for the final winners of the Whatsonstage.com
Theatregoers' Choice Awards commenced Monday 2 December 2002
and continued through December and January with winners announced
in February 2003.

For the full list of nominees and winners
and more information, visit What's
On Stage.